Nepal ranks 20th in modern day slavery index

KATHMANDU, NOV 24 – Nepal has been ranked 20th among 167 countries in terms of the prevalence of modern day slavery. The 2014 Global Slavery Index has estimated that 228,700 people in the country are subjected to modern day slavery.

The report released by Walk Free Foundation last week has also listed Nepal as the fifth most vulnerable country to modern day slavery in the Asia Pacific region. Neighbouring India ranks top most in the region followed by Pakistan, Cambodia and Mongolia.

In the world rankings, India and Pakistan are ranked fifth and sixth, respectively. Mauritania ranks first in the index with four percent of its almost 4 million people subjected to modern day slavery.

The report also highlights that men from Nepal along with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh working in the Middle East are in forced labour in the construction industry, while women from the same countries have been subjected to sexual exploitation and domestic violence.

The case study of Qatar carried out in the report also says that migrant workers from Nepal and other South Asian countries are subjected to a range of exploitative practices, including forced labour, domestic servitude, extortionate recruitment fees, illegal confiscation of passports, withholding of salaries, hazardous workplaces, unhygienic living conditions and physical, psychological and sexual abuse from employers.

The Australia-based organisation, which works to end modern day slavery, prepares its report based on researches over a year. The report terms the modern day slavery as involvement of a person possessing or controlling another person to significantly deprive that person of their individual liberty and with the intention of exploiting that person through their use, management, profit, transfer or disposal. The report states that India also remains susceptible destination for Nepali women and children. “Young Nepali women banned from travelling to the Gulf for domestic work also pass through India as an alternative route. Some of these migrants then experience abuse and exploitation. Other migrants are fraudulently sent by recruiters to India to be transported to jobs in the Gulf, only to remain in India in positions of forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation,” the report has stated.

According to the report, around 38.5 million people around the world are the victims of modern day slavery.